On the Descent
FEW FILMS HAVE BETTER PERSUADED ME OF CLASSICAL HOLLYWOOD FILMMAKING’S totalizing sensual force than Albert Lewin’s . Every element of MGM’s prestige-horror adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s 1890 novel is set exquisitely in place to contradictorily put viewers off their bearings, accomplishing that woozy, unsettled dream state seemingly endemic only to movies of this era. In the title role, Hurd Hatfield may not be as beautiful as the iconic narcissus described by Wilde, but his ethereal, extraterrestrial stare and the skull-like smoothness of his immobile face make him one of the most fundamentally odd leading men in all of American movies. (George Sanders, on the other hand, was a natural choice, clearly born to play the morally desiccated bon vivant Lord Henry, Dorian’s devil-on-the-shoulder.) Harry Stradling’s Oscar-winning black-and-white cinematography is a master class in gothic chiaroscuro and where
